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THE ADS IDEA BOOK© 2011 BY ADS.

Manufactured in the USA. All rights reserved. No other part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means

including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from ADS,except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Your attention is a scarce resource. The average person is exposed to over 3,000 advertising messages a day. Most of which go unnoticed. We are all overloaded with an embarrassing number of opportunities, choices and assorted messages that consume our time and money. Today the old rules of advertising do not and will not work. A fresh approach to advertising and winning new customers is required.

We are ADS; the leader in automotive direct mail and online advertising. We bring an integrated approach for getting customers to your dealership. We know how to make advertising work in today’s new economy.

Powerful advertising is anticipated, personal, and relevant.

Powerful advertising is anticipated, personal, and relevant. We combine technology and talent which are the ingredients to a successful automotive advertising campaign. It’s a new game now. A game in which we are competing for attention. How you earn it is an art and science. This is what makes ADS unique and regarded as one of the top automotive mail and web advertising companies in America.

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If you send a dealer direct mail marketing piece out, the processes for capturing, converting and servicing leads must be predetermined and automated. The steps involved typically involve visiting a landing page, registering and follow-up for the potential car buyer. Your systems and your team need to engage at each step. This closed-loop marketing approach must be lined up to ensure the most timely reaction based on the customer’s window of giving you attention. Don’t squander it. Timing is everything.

Strategy Is Long-TermYour strategies should combine both the immediate and the ongoing. There are people ready to react to an offer if you can get their attention and be compelling today. There are many others that will be ready if you can build trust. Ensure your marketing dollars are not only capturing new sales, but also building something that becomes an asset to make doing business in the monthly sales cycle easier. A system for selling always trumps just selling from the hip.

Car Dealer Marketing Strategies

Your monthly sales cycle involves a relentless need for driving an effective “car dealer marketing” process. Without this, your competitors will drive demand through their ability to capture attention in the marketplace.

Here are three strategies which will help drive more “inbound marketing” opportunities:

If you present standard size mailers or mediocre graphics, you might as well save your money. The competition is too dense for mediocrity to work. Ensure the quality of what the prospective customer touches, sees and experiences is professional and of the highest caliber. You must stand out or just stay home.

Everyone is not ready to buy right now just because you want to sell cars. The majority of people either do not have a need based on timing. They will buy, but just not right now. Make your call to action two-fold. One should be for those that want a deal now. The other should focus on a lesser call to action. Give something to get their email address. With this, you have permission to drive further nurturing to allow them to get to know your car dealership and build trust. When they are ready, your effective nurturing will make them a new customer one day.

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Marketing has changed --- have you?

All of us come to a moment of truth in our careers, a defining moment when our profession becomes clearer than ever because of what we've experienced in the trenches. You may have experienced this in your career, too --- a moment that changes you, when a huge success spurs you on to new levels of performance, or when a subtle change in how you sell or manage process proves invaluable to your business. I believe we all have at least one moment like this in our career.

My profession is marketing, selling, training, operations, and leadership. My moment of truth arrived when I least expected it --- one day at lunch with two very good business owners. I was sharing some observations that I had drawn from my experiences with "car people." As I described some of the experiences I had encountered, the three of us noticed the same themes surfacing:

Advertising has changed but most car dealers have not. Most dealerships rely on one form of advertising almost exclusively. I call it Interruption Marketing because the key to each and every ad is to interrupt the prospect to get them thinking about something else. That used to work, today consumers tune out those messages.

Timing is everything. Today people don't want to be sold but they do want to buy. Aligning a prospect's buying process with a dealerships selling process is the key to future sales success.

This awareness has launched me on a great adventure that has been both rewarding and challenging. Today I am continually learning and applying myself to the art of marketing and deciphering customer intentions. It is my hope that this book will provide the ideas that spur you forward that provide that epiphany in your own business.

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Dealer Marketing Industry LeaderADS has over a 90% customer retention rate. Our satisfied clients continue to return to us, year after year, confident that we will continue to drive interested customers to their showrooms. Promotion after promotion, we are industry leaders in automotive direct mailings.

Speed

Part of our draw for many clients is the speed at which we’re able to deliver direct mail pieces. An important step in our mailing process allows us to bypass sectional center facilities. SCFs can sometimes hold up mail for days, even weeks. By using our own direct mail systems, we can deliver auto direct mailings to potential customers more quickly than just about any service out there.

The more quickly customers get direct mail pieces, the more quickly your automotive mail campaigns start to work. Clients will know about your promotions several days sooner on average, and you can be assured auto buyers will fill your showroom over a longer period of time. The sooner during the promotion period customers are informed about the promotion, the more opportunity you have to draw as many potential buyers in as possible.

System

ADS can meet our bottom line when our customers meet theirs. Well-designed automotive direct mailers with a flawlessly executed marketing campaign system keep our customers coming back time after time. With the knowledge and expertise to make complex marketing campaigns happen, ADS is an industry leader in automotive direct mailing services.

Price

Many of our customers may be concerned about pricing – and rightly so. We often find that our competitors have much steeper pricing, and don’t work with a system that ensures rapid delivery or customer satisfaction. Because we are the printer and mailer, our customized services can happen much more quickly than many of our competitors’ solutions, and our prices are reasonable, particularly considering the value all our clients receive

Effectiveness

With personally designed advertisements that go directly after our customers’ target audiences, we ensure a high success rate and have a higher retention rate than many automotive direct mail service providers in the business.

Our customers are the reason we stay in business, and we will do everything in our power to provide the best auto mailer service for car dealerships out there. With custom designed advertisements, rapid mailing services and a high retention rate, ADS continues to lead the industry as one of the best automotive direct mailing service centers out there.

We prove our value to clients time and time again, creating campaigns that keep customers coming back and buying season after season. With automotive direct mailing services, you can ensure that your pieces have high-quality designs, and fit the needs of your dealership time and time again. ADS is proud to provide top of the line services to customer, mailer after mailer.

With the ADS Marketing Automation Package we take four key technologies that work together to produce the following results for your dealer: - A winning online strategy that produces ready buyers on a regular basis. - A strategy for winning prospects who will be purchasing a vehicle in 60 or more days. - An effective social media strategy that generates daily sales and service leads. - A comprehensive dashboard where you see what is working and how it is working. - Effective marketing automation where your customers and prospects get the right message, at the right time, and in the right format. - A system that brings consistent value to your customers and develops new purchase leads. - A system that targets and connects with the right prospects. - A system that helps your brand to spread and connect with new prospects through your current fans.

How Effective Is Your Marketing Strategy?

How Effective Is Your Marketing Strategy?

MARKETING SYSTEMADS Targeter

Deciphering customer intentions

Timing is Everything

Powerful analytics built for the car business

Help the customer see what’s in it for them.

Get new leads by engaging the customer in a sweepstakes

Each contestant helps promote dealers contest through their personal online network

Permission marketing --- get the customer to volunteer.

Provide incentive for contestant to provide additional information.

Integrates email marketing solutions through ADS Targeter©

FAST lead generation

Enhanced data and precise targeting

Grow, Track, Filter and Engage your Customers

Each contestant that enters your contests is taken through a quick “post-this” process that allows them to easily post a message on their Facebook and Twitter.

Communicate with customers through social media and email

Fully integrated email marketing solution

We monitor, analyze, and react in real-time.

Can you finally measure marketing effectiveness? YES

Permission marketing --- get the customer to volunteer.

Get new leads by engaging the customer in a sweepstakes

Engage the customer with social media

Sent to specific Ford vehicle owners.

Special contests

Vehicle specific to the customerIncreased brand

awareness for the dealership

MAIL

First time visit to Service DepartmentIntroducing Service Department

Personalized, timely and relevant

Dealership branding

Special coupon

EMAIL Sent to contestant.

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Goal: The goal for this campaign was to eliminate excess used car inventory.

Nothing can be ‘too customized’ in our opinion. One of our customers, Mac Haik Dodge Chrysler Jeep required a compelling ad with a call to action that would result in driving as much traffic as possible to their showroom event. We created a strategic 8-page custom mailer that was so effective, we had to outsource the high volume of calls to our own call center. The result? 2,080 phone calls. 1,573 appointments. 37 cars sold and big gross profits for Mac Haik. All in just 5 days.

Chris Carstens the Pre-Owned Sales Manager said, "In the 12 years of doing these type of campaigns with other ad agencies this was by far the most successful from several aspects. The communication and teamwork that ADS provided proved to be the winning touch to a most successful campaign."

“This campaign was wildly successful. We were truly overwhelmed with the amount of customers that came into our dealership from this campaign."

--- Chris CarstensPre-Owned Sales Manager

Mack Haik Dodge Chrysler Jeep

Mac Haik Dodge Chrysler Jeep

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Goal: The goal for this campaign was to help drive qualified buyers interested in purchasing a new vehicle.

Until today, the only way dealerships have been able to understand what consumers want has been by observing or asking directly. Not anymore. Our innovative approach to advertising is what helps our customers sell more cars. Federico Chrysler Dodge Jeep didn’t have enough records in their database for a 10,000 piece promotion designed to move new vehicles. We used a creative and state-of-the-art approach to help get the outcome they wanted. We profiled their database, found conquest prospects in their market area, and customized a campaign that would accurately target and nurture ready buyers. The immediate result --- 22 vehicles sold, 17 of them - new vehicles.

“ADS knows how to win."

--- Kerry ThompsonGeneral Manager

Federico Chrysler Dodge Jeep

Federico Chrysler Dodge Jeep

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Teamwork and ExecutionThe automotive industry can teach us a lot of valuable lessons about managing change.

Following are some lessons that I've learned that make our team perform well.

Notice I didn't say a long time, I said forever. Hugh MacLeod author of Ignore Everybody says, "Ninety percent of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina." What gives me the edge in automotive marketing is the simple fact that I've spent thousands of hours perfecting it. If someone wants to copy it go ahead. They will have to invest thousands of hours and the reality is most won't do it.

Execution is not the result of a single action or decision. It is the result of a series of integrated decisions or actions over time. Our team recognizes what perfect looks like. It's completion of all 19 steps to our process.

Without a written step-by-step process, execution becomes hope. Without a process, individuals do the things they think are important, often resulting in uncoordinated and often conflicting actions and results. Continually go back to the model. Don't leave anything vague or it will affect execution success

Don't hire average and then expect great results. Be very good at spotting talent for the roles on your team. If you have it, congratulations, if you don't, I pity you.

It is important to recognize and reward the right actions of your team. It reinforces for the team what right looks like. Be relentless about what right looks like and your team will follow suit in making it happen.

This helps reinforce teamwork if you focus on what total perfection looks like. When our team said it would help if we explained to new ADS customers how we do business, we created a video guiding our customer through five steps of how we do business. We also made sure we had agreement with all five steps before proceeding. This assured our team that our customer knew what the expectations are and helped our customer to know the role they played in reaching the goal.

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Goal: Create traffic for two weeks with a limited budget.

At ADS we love exceeding expectations. Pinehurst Nissan had concerns before choosing ADS because of the mixed results they experienced in the past with previous mailing companies. They had a limited budget but needed a two week traffic flow to their event. Our solution, A compelling Black Tag Event theme that would drive traffic. The result - over 200 appointments! A huge success."

“ADS is the best advertising company I have worked with for a multitude of reasons!"

--- Matt HarrellGeneral ManagerPinehurst Nissan

Pinehurst Nissan

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Three Ways to Maximize Online and Offline Auto Marketing With so many digital marketing companies working to meet a client’s online needs, the effect of offline marketing materials may seem to be diminishing over time. We field client questions regarding how our marketing campaigns coincide with online marketing strategy rather frequently. As a dealership manager, you already know the difficulties of getting customers onto your lots.

The truth is, any good offline marketing campaign does not compete with your online campaigns – they supplement each other and work hand in hand to get an interested customer to your lot. Automotive direct mail services should be working in conjunction with your online promotional campaigns – whether your company is using social media tactics, email marketing strategy or other forms of online communication with clients.

When it comes to merging online and offline marketing strategy, you can ensure your strategies work together seamlessly and accomplish their intended purposes. New customers are buying all the time, and only pushing heavy online and offline promos during your end-of-year-deals isn’t going to cut it. You have at least 10 months of prime auto-selling time to utilize throughout the year that many dealerships aren’t capitalizing on.

Here are a few ways to unite your marketing campaigns to create a bigger picture – and more customer commitments for your dealership.

Many marketing campaigns generally fail due to their lack of a unified theme. When customers receive materials from you with varied or confusing branding, they will walk away confused about your dealership and your promotions.

Keep in mind, for each unique campaign using consistent:

• Language and Messaging• Color Schemes and images• Layout design• Bold Call-to-action• Clear contact information

Your automotive direct mail promotions should match whatever online branding your firm is doing. This will give you multiple chances to market a particular promotion or idea to a customer over time. The more a potential customer becomes familiar with your promotions, the better your chances of making the sale.

Far too many marketing campaigns begin without well-defined goals.

Consider defining goals around and make sure your marketing resources have accurate ways of measuring:

• anticipated revenue• volume or traffic to lot• phone-in calls• visits to website from direct mail

piece• new email subscribers to online

marketingAdditionally, you should determine how offline and online marketing campaigns will inform and assist each other, and if there are or should be overarching goals both campaigns could meet by the end of their run.

Using your auto direct mail services as part of an online campaign might be a great practice for your dealership. Creating an online campaign based around a successful offline automotive direct mail strategy could get your mailers in front of your customers multiple times.

When it comes to marketing online and offline, use automotive direct mail services alongside a great online campaign for maximum benefits and results.

Experience ADS

At ADS we know how to help you get the results you want. We invite you to experience ADS for yourself.

Visit us at www.adsautomarketing.comor feel free to call us at (877) 355-6245.